


23,010 Dawns

by Quicksilver_ink



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:45:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5118977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quicksilver_ink/pseuds/Quicksilver_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mags, the victor of the 12th Hunger Games, has seen many sunrises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	23,010 Dawns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Suzume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzume/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Save Yourself](https://archiveofourown.org/works/500049) by [Suzume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzume/pseuds/Suzume). 
  * Inspired by [Your Own Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/798160) by [Suzume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzume/pseuds/Suzume). 



> Written for Suzume as an extra treat (well, Trick) for Trick-or-Treat 2015. This was meant to be a "missing scenes" treat fic for Suzume's _Your Own Kind_ , but the framing device rather ran away with me. As such, it makes the most sense if you've read both of her excellent works about Mags and the Victors of the early Hunger Games, and leans heavily on the events of both stories.

Mags wakes up and lies to herself: She'll eat the breakfast she can smell Papa making. She should should make her bed so it's tidy when she returns to its warm embrace tonight. She'll go to, to school, and see her friends and laugh and joke with them, just like every day.

But the blue-and-white dress is her best, the fabric under her fingers too fine for daily wear. She has no appetite, and when she sees her friends this morning, they'll be quiet, their smiles tight and forced.

***

Makes wakes up in a strange bed from dreams of rising water and impossible choices. She's in the Capitol, and later that day the boy she dreamed was drowning tells her he's sailing alone. Beanpole offers a treaty of nonaggression, of mutual aid – but only if they chart their own courses. They shake on it.

* * *

Mags wakes at midnight to the distant, echoing retort that tells of another's eternal sleep. Her ensuing rest is fitful, on this island of death, and she rises with the tide.

***

Mags wakes in the arena and has a friend. They share crackers and jokes, and hunger and fear, and trade watches for many nights. But Sparrow turns out to be a Hawk, and they trade blows.

After, Mags wakes up, covered and blood and with Beanpole at her side. Sparrow does not.

* * *

Mags wakes up alone.

* * *

Mags wakes from dreams of blood in the water and shark-smiles and ghosts. The Capitol is civilized, so they have pills to keep her sleep black and empty of the butchery they drove her to.

* * *

Mags wakes many times in a house so big it takes her a week to try out every bedroom. Being in the house is a little like being a hermit crab in a too-large shell, and that's how she moves through her days – everyone's friendly and welcomes the dappled spiral when it approaches, but her heart feels far away.

  
  


* * *

Mags wakes up in a different District every week. She's fêted and fed, petted and praised for surviving. She nods and smiles and sometimes it's even real – as evil as the Games are, most people in Panem are not. The Capitol people adore her for being famous, and not for herself, but being kind is easier than breathing.

* * *

Mags wakes up on the train heading home, after a night of eating and dancing, and of awkward conversation with the brilliantly charming Jack Umber. She's had so much she's wanted to say to him, the first victor from the first District, but two dances are all she gets.

She did get two dances, though.

* * *

Mags wakes up from nightmares before the next Reaping, of Faline being called again and being unable to save her.

The mayor's daughter is Reaped for the girls, instead. Mags knew her obliquely. That doesn't make it any easier when she dies fifteen minutes into the Games.

Through sponsorship and gifts, she has a chance to save the boy. She sleeps more easily when he makes it through the first two nights.

He makes it to the final four, and dies in his sleep.

* * *

Mags wakes day after day at home in Four, where she does her best to teach survival in the arena to teenagers who want to learn. She wakes up on the overnight train to the Capitol for a date with Jake – and then another, and another. She wakes up and greets Silk when the Victory Tour arrives at four. Mornings go by, and then she wakes up to another Reaping. 

Reaping day brings two volunteers. Two of hers.

* * *

Mags wakes every day before the games so full of hope and fear for her Tributes that it hurts. Everything they do, they do together. Planned for the reaping together; train at the Capitol together; fight off the other tributes together; die together.

* * *

Mags wakes up but she wasn’t sleeping. Maria and Jerrik’s deaths weren’t a dream. They were hers and now they are gone.

Jack is hers, too, and when his tributes die he looks like he’ll join them in the grave if he’s left alone.

Mags won’t leave him alone. 

* * *

Mags wakes up warm and safe. Jack blinks awake, yawns, and then smiles in a soft sort of wonder. “You stayed,” he says.

“I stayed,” she agrees, then reaches shyly to cup his face in her hand. 

They bump noses when they try to kiss, at first, although that’s a problem easily solved. And then they both wake up a bit more, and touching each other is like sunshine, Jack is smiling, smiling

* * *

Mags wakes up, and has to run to the bathroom to empty her stomach. She’s realized what this means. The ship of her life has hit another storm, but she’s climbed the mast already so there’s nothing to do but hold tight to the mast.

A few months later, Mags wakes up, and she’s Mrs. Mags Umber. 

  
  


* * *

Mags wakes up, her loose grey hairs framing her face. Besides her, Jack is already sitting up and rubbing his eyes. His hair went white long ago -- to match his teeth, he says at interviews, and laughs. 

“I love you,” he tells her, and smiles, and despite the wrinkles (the Capitol lost interest in him years ago and let him grow old) he’s as handsome as he’s ever been. 

“I love you too,” Mags says, or tries to, but suddenly her tongue goes to wool and her jaw creaks like ice and--

  
Mags wakes up, alone in her bed, on the morning of the Seventy-Fifth Reaping, and tells gerself the truth.


End file.
